Elixir is known for being a language made for building distributed applications that scale, are massively concurrent, and have self-healing properties. All of these adjectives paint Elixir in a grandiose light. And for good reasons! But is Elixir also a language that can be used for the more mundane tasks of this world like scripting? I think the answer is a definite yes.

I’ve been writing Elixir for a few years now, but when it comes time to script something I still reach for Ruby. Case in point, our data import routines for changelog.com (which y’all know is an Elixir app) are written in Ruby.

Why do I do this? Familiarity plays a big part. Also I find Ruby to be highly ergonomic for such tasks. Having said that, this article will make me consider trying Elixir for my next script.

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